5.30.2012

Maurice Sendak and the wildest things of all

A teacher reads the late author's famous
kids' book to a group of abused teens, who listen like a roomful of
children at story time.

Maurice Sendak, the author
and illustrator of "In the Night Kitchen," "Where the Wild Things Are"
and other children's classics, once told NPR's Terry Gross that as a kid
he thought that "adults seemed mostly dreadful." Sendak's death was
announced Tuesday.
(Illustration by Maximillan Kornell / For The Times / May 11, 2012)

By Amy Goldman Koss

May 13, 2012

Maurice Sendak's
death was announced Tuesday just a few minutes before I was due at the
residential foster home and school where I volunteer, teaching writing
to abused teenagers.
Sendak, the author and illustrator of "In the Night Kitchen," "Where the Wild Things Are"and other children's classics, once told NPR's
Terry Gross that as a kid he thought that "adults seemed mostly
dreadful." I suspect the kids who find themselves in our foster care
system would agree.
I got to the school library before the class
arrived, so the librarian and I had a moment to grieve about Sendak. She
told me that she and her husband had just been talking about his 1967
book, "Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life." She said
it was that book that helped them throw over their old life and move to
California years ago.
Our conversation was
interrupted by a scream in the corridor. An amazing, prolonged,
nightmarish scream, produced by a child beyond the brink. I've read
about screams sounding inhuman, but this was the first I'd ever heard.
There was no explanation.
When
I first toured the school I was shown a few small, soundproofed rooms,
each with a narrow bench-bed inside. Details were few, but I was told
that the children could be volatile and self-destructive and sometimes
needed isolation. When the unearthly scream subsided, I imagined the
screamer being ushered into one of those freak-out chambers to roar his
terrible roars and gnash his terrible teeth.
Transitions from one
class to another are delayed when there are disruptions in the hall, so
my kids were late trooping in. There were two new faces. Other faces
were missing, including some I'd become quite fond of.
I'd been
discouraged from asking questions about my students' lives, and so I
know very little about what situations land them here or take them away.
I
am endlessly curious, of course, about the big, burly, painfully
blushing shy boy who likes art books; the too-cool-to-smile but clearly
sweet boy always eager to read his writing out loud first; the chatty
ones; the pierced and tatted; the ones nodding on meds; the giggly; the
sullen; the pregnant. But when the librarian says, "Trust me, you don't
want to know their stories; it's best to just think of them as kids," I
try to do just that.
On Tuesday, I asked the class if they knew
who Maurice Sendak was, and none did. I asked if any of them knew the
book "Where the Wild Things Are," and a few said they'd seen the movie.
In
1993, Sendak told NPR, "Children surviving childhood is my obsessive
theme and my life's concern." In a 1986 interview with Gross, he said,
"Being a child was being a creature without power, without pocket money,
without escape routes of any kind."
Looking around at the captive
young people in this class, his statements seemed truer and far more
relevant than in most classes I visit. Sendak's own childhood, like the
ones he portrayed in his books, was fraught with peril, isolation and
fear. It's appalling but not surprising that many adults have found his
vision of childhood alarming and want to keep it from their innocent
babes. Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen" is 25th on the American Library
Assn.'s list of most frequently banned or challenged books.
When I
told my class of wild things that I was going to read "Where the Wild
Things Are" to them, there was a little affronted snickering at the idea
of picture books for such big galoots.
I thought about telling
them that Sendak had based the wild things on his own Jewish Eastern
European immigrant relatives. As he said in a 2004 interview with Bill
Moyers, "These people didn't speak English. And they were unkempt. Their
teeth were horrifying. Hair ... unraveling out of their noses. And
they'd pick you up and hug you and kiss you, 'Aggghh! Oh I could eat you
up!'"
But I didn't give any introduction, figuring Sendak would
want these kids to see the wild things as whatever demons of their own
needed taming. I started reading and the whole class was instantly
silent and still, like a room of children at story time, which is
exactly what they were. Listening to Sendak's words, watching his
pictures expand to fill the pages, and shrink back down again.
In
"Where the Wild Things Are," Max, in his wolf suit, gets sent to bed
without supper. But after his great adventure out-wilding the wild
things, he returns to his room and finds his dinner waiting for him,
still hot.
Unlike Max, my students can't count on dinner to be
waiting for them, but they clearly understood Max, and heard Sendak as
clearly as if he were still alive, and would be forever.Amy Goldman Koss' latest novel for teens is "The Not-So-Great Depression."

5.29.2012

Babies left to cry stay unhappy hours afterwards as stress hormone remains high

Don't be fooled: Babies continue to be unhappy
for hours after crying as the levels of stress hormone cortisol remain
high, but just keep quiet about it, a study has found (file picture)

It is a blissful moment for any parent, when a once fractious baby finally learns to fall asleep without a murmur.

But mothers and fathers should not be lulled into a false sense of security, because their child may actually still be upset.

A
study found that levels of the stress hormone cortisol remain high in
‘cry babies’ even in the days after they have apparently learnt to
settle themselves.

In other words, the child is still unhappy but just keeping quiet about it.

The
research will reignite the debate about the pros and cons of
controlled crying – letting unsettled babies sob themselves to sleep.

Sticklers
for routine, such as childcare guru Gina Ford, say that if babies cry
during designated sleeping hours they should not be picked up.

But
others, including fellow author and childcare expert Sheila Kitzinger,
claim mothers should be guided by their instincts and not by
prescriptive routines.

The study involved tracking hormone levels in babies and their mothers.

More...

Many of the children, who were
aged between four months and ten months, had trouble getting into a
routine or settling without being comforted.

During the study they were put to bed and left to soothe themselves to sleep, and the length of time that they cried was logged.

More research needed: The brevity of the study
means it is not clear if cortisol produced by the babies does eventually
drop, so a larger one is now underway

Their
mothers stayed in a room near enough to hear any cries but were not
allowed to go to their children. Levels of cortisol were measured in the
women and in their babies on the first night of the study and on the
third.

By the third night,
the infants cried little before dropping off. However, their levels of
cortisol remained high, the journal Early Human Development reports.

In
contrast, the amount of cortisol in the mothers had dropped, suggesting
that they had relaxed due to the lack of crying from their baby.

Wendy
Middlemiss, a researcher at University of North Texas, said: ‘Although
the infants exhibited no behavioural cue that they were experiencing
distress at the transition to sleep, they continued to experience high
levels of physiological distress, as reflected in their cortisol scores.

‘However,
given the continued presence of distress, infants were not learning how
to internally manage their experiences of stress and discomfort.’

The
brevity of the study means it is not clear if cortisol produced by the
babies does eventually drop. The researchers are now doing a longer
study, to see if the hormone’s level falls with time, as babies learn to
cope with going to sleep alone.

Siobhan
Freegard, of the parenting advice website Netmums, said: ‘I don’t think
anybody would ever say that you shouldn’t use controlled crying – it is
about getting the balance right.

‘If
you are on maternity leave with your first child and can have a nice
lie-in and breastfeed the baby in bed, that is very different to being a
single mum who needs to go out to work or no one will eat.

‘I
have been advised many times to try controlled crying, but it caused me
much more stress than picking up the baby and doing what comes
naturally.

‘But I know other mums who have found controlled crying short, sharp and successful.’

5.28.2012

For Marine's widow, Memorial Day has extra meaning

Staff Sgt. Joseph Fankhauser was killed in
Afghanistan last month when he stepped on an improvised explosive
device. 'We live with death' in Explosive Ordnance Disposal, his wife,
Heather, says.

Photos in their home at Camp
Pendleton show Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Fankhauser with his wife,
Heather.
(Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / May 23, 2012)

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2012

CAMP PENDLETON — Marine Staff
Sgt. Joseph Fankhauser had been inAfghanistan'svolatile Helmand
province for barely two weeks when he stepped on what the military calls
an improvised explosive device. He was on his fifth combat deployment.
There
had been a rainstorm, the ground had shifted and was soft, and the
usual signs of a hidden bomb were not there. It was a joint patrol:
Marines, British forces and Afghans. Only Fankhauser, 30, was killed.
"It
gives me a kind of peace that it wasn't a mistake" but rather an
accident, Heather Fankhauser, 35, said of her husband's death. "It
wasn't anything he could have done. Lots of other guys, guys with
families, were there that day, and they'll be going home, and that's how
my husband would want it."
Joseph Fankhauser was a
technician with Explosive Ordnance Disposal — an elite unit within
theU.S. militarywhose goal is finding and defusing the buried bombs that
are the enemy's weapon of choice. It is an especially tight-knit
fraternity that has seen 111 of its members killed from9/11through
January, according to a listing kept by the privately run E.O.D.
Memorial Foundation.
Of those, 41 were Marines, 34 were in the Army, 20 the Air Force, and 16 the Navy.
At
his funeral in Oceanside on May 7, Fankhauser was praised for being a
perfectionist and helping bring home hundreds of Marines from his
earlier deployment to Afghanistan by finding the bombs that were meant to kill and maim.
More
than a hundred EOD Marines attended the service at the Eternal Hills
Memorial Chapel. Marines in their dress blues stood along the walls of
the chapel. Their wives, many with tears in their eyes, sat in the pews.
"He
was fanatical about everything," said Robert Luke, a former Marine who
is now a bomb squad detective with the San Diego County Sheriff's
Department and served as one of Fankhauser's pallbearers. "He made sure
everything was in order, no short cuts. He never made mistakes. In EOD
when you make a mistake, people die."
Heather Fankhauser had
arranged a video montage of pictures of her and her husband at
Disneyland and Balboa Park, their "second" wedding (their first was by
proxy while he was deployed) and Joseph playing with the family dogs.
There
was some laughter at some of the playful pictures. But the chapel fell
silent at a picture of the flag-draped casket arriving at Dover Air
Force Base in Delaware.
At the end of the funeral, as Marines, one
by one, walked slowly to the front of the chapel, they left their EOD
badges on the top of the casket, the ultimate sign of respect. Some were
limping from combat injuries.
Gunnery Sgt. Brian Meyer, who lost
his right leg and several fingers in Afghanistan in March 2011, did not
know Fankhauser but still wanted to show his respect. "He was EOD,"
Meyer said, as if no further explanation was needed.
Fankhauser,
who grew up in McAllen, Texas, and enlisted in the Marines just days
after graduating from high school, was assigned to the 7th Engineer
Support Battalion, 1st Marine Logistics Group. He was killed on April
22.
"Two days later four men came to my door telling me that my
life was over," Heather said. "I have to move forward, but I don't want
to."
Heather wears a bracelet bearing the names of 18 MarineEOD
techs killed in Afghanistan in 2010. She used to have a bracelet with
the names of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but then the names
grew too numerous for one bracelet.
Like several EOD widows,
Heather got a tattoo in her husband's honor after his death. Hers says
"4-22-12. Forever." Other widows have chosen tattoos in the design of
the EOD badge. There is also a tattoo that says simply, "EOD Wife."
Joseph
Fankhauser had three deployments as an infantry "grunt" before
switching to Explosive Ordnance Disposal. Heather had alerted him to the
plea from Marine Corps headquarters for more volunteers for EOD as the
two wars thinned its ranks. She knew the risks.
"We live with death in EOD," she said. "When your husband goes to EOD, you know there's a good chance you'll lose him."
Heather
and Joseph had met the modern way: online. She was living in San Diego
and he was deployed. When he came home, their first date was in the
Gaslamp District.
When they decided to marry, he was deployed again. They married in a proxy ceremony, seven years ago this October.
Heather
said she will never regret her husband's choice to become a bomb tech.
He was happier and felt more challenged and more vital than he had in
the infantry.
Her biggest regret is that their attempts at having a child were unsuccessful. "We had wanted a baby forever," she said.
Heather
does not think she will attend any of the picnics or other social
gatherings that are common ways many Americans, civilian and military,
will celebrate this Memorial Day.
She said she wants to spend her time with people who remember that the
holiday is meant as a day of reverence for those who have worn their
nation's uniform.
She may attend the Memorial Day ceremony at Fort
Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, where the keynote address
will be made by a Marine general.
"I want to see it," she said of
the ceremony. "I want to feel it. Maybe if I see the love and support,
it will feel right again, because now nothing feels right. I don't want
to go to a pool party or barbecue."
Heather was at the Dover base
when her husband's casket arrived. She was accompanied by a casualty
assistance officer from Camp Pendleton. Four other Explosive Ordnance
Disposal technicians were on the tarmac, along with the white-gloved
Marine "carry team" to lift the casket gently from the cargo plane.
Days
later, when her husband's body arrived at the mortuary in Oceanside,
she stayed with the casket all night. "I couldn't leave him alone," she
said.
When his unit returns from Afghanistan later this year, there will be a ceremony and his ashes will be interred at Rosecrans.
Until
then, they are in an urn that she keeps in her bedroom. "It's like he's
somehow still with me," Heather said. "There's no right way to do this;
there's no right way to be a widow."
She could stay in her Camp
Pendleton home for another year, but she may leave sooner. The
Fankhausers had a plan in case he did not return from deployment: She
would buy a home in San Diego and go to college, maybe become a
therapist or counselor.
"When your husband is EOD," she said, "you have to have a plan."tony.perry@latimes.com

5.26.2012

As a way of saying thank you to those who are serving our country, all Active Duty Military Members will be able to snag a FREE Annual Pass to National Parks (an $80 value!) beginning tomorrow, May 19th
(which is Armed Forces Day). All Active Duty men and women – Army,
Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and activated National Guard and
Reserves – can get their pass at any national park or wildlife refuge that charges an entrance fee
by showing their military ID. Each family member will also be able to
obtain their own pass even if the service member is deployed or if they
are traveling separately.

The Annual Park Pass which is valid for one full year will provide
access to National Park Service Parks, US Fish & Wildlife Service
Lands, Bureau of Reclamation Lands, Bureau of Land Management Lands, US
Forest Service Locations, and US Army Corps sites. Where there are
entrance fees, the pass covers the owner and accompanying passengers in a
single, private, non-commercial vehicle at recreation sites that charge
per vehicle. At sites where per-person entrance fees are charged, it
covers the pass owner and three accompanying adults age 16 and older.
There is no entry fee for children 15 and under.

Important Note: While the pass is not available
to veterans and retirees, many of these individuals are eligible for
other discounted passes, such as the Senior Pass, granting lifetime
access to U.S. citizens over 62 for $10, and the Access Pass granting
free lifetime access for permanently disabled U.S. citizens.

5.25.2012

KATU 2/Associated Press -
In this undated image taken from video courtesy of KATU 2, Max
Hirsh, 22, speaks during an interview in Portland, Ore. Hirsh, who is
openly gay, contends an Oregon psychiatrist he was seeing was practicing
“conversion therapy” to change his sexual orientation. His experience
is the subject of an ethics complaint filed on May 8, 2012, by the
Southern Poverty Law Center, which plans to take the same action in
other states as part of a national campaign to stop therapists from
trying to make gay people straight.

By Associated Press, Published: May 23

PORTLAND, Ore. — Max Hirsh says he
sensed something wasn’t quite right when the psychiatrist focused on
his failures with sports and teenage girls, as well as his deficient
relationships with older men, particularly his father.
Hirsh became convinced of the psychiatrist’s rationale for
those questions by the fourth session, when he essentially told the
openly gay Hirsh that his true sexuality was in the closet.

“But you’re heterosexual,” Hirsh recalls the psychiatrist telling him.
Hirsh insisted he was gay; the psychiatrist wasn’t buying it.
“He said ‘No,’ like he had some extra information about my sexuality that I didn’t,” Hirsh said.
Hirsh,
22, contends the Oregon psychiatrist was practicing “conversion
therapy” to change his sexual orientation. His experience is the
subject of an ethics complaint filed this month by the Southern Poverty
Law Center, which plans to take the same action in other states as part
of a national campaign to stop therapists from trying to make gay people
straight.
The complaint sent to the American Psychological
Association and the Oregon Psychiatric Association arrived in what has
become something of a watershed month for opponents of the form of
psychotherapy. California legislators advanced a bill to the state
senate that would ban children younger than 18 from receiving conversion
therapy. And Dr. Robert Spitzer, a prominent retired psychiatrist,
apologized to the gay community last week for a “fatal flaw” in his
influential 2001 study that found conversion therapy to be a successful
option for some people.
Hirsh’s experience with the psychiatrist,
who he was seeing because he was depressed, could not be independently
verified. The Southern Poverty Law Center blacked out the doctor’s name
in a copy of the complaint supplied to journalists, and Hirsh and his
lawyer would not identify the doctor. Christine Sun, the law center’s
deputy legal director, said the psychological associations require
confidentiality when investigating complaints.
The American
Psychological Association, in a 2009 resolution, said mental health
professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight
because there is no solid proof that such a change is likely. The law
center wants its anti-conversion effort to spur tougher restrictions
and, down the road, more legislative action, such as what’s occurring in
California.
“Our immediate goal is for the APA to take these
allegations seriously and ultimately ban conversion therapy by its
members,” Sun said.
Supporters of what is called reparative
therapy contend the overwhelming majority of gay people are not born
that way, and those who want to change should not be denied access to
qualified professionals.
David Pickup, a Los Angeles-area
counselor who specializes in reparative therapy, said he has helped many
clients “maximize their heterosexual potential,” when they have come to
him because they believe there is a cause-and-effect reason, such as
sexual abuse, for their same-sex attraction.

Living a cashless life

How much cash is in your wallet right now? Don’t know, do you? That’s
because our society is hurtling toward cashlessness. Just about everyone
from Starbucks to taxi cabs to your cable company take plastic these
days, and a couple months ago, Slates Seth Stevenson decided to speed up the clock a bit and start living a cashless life.
While it’s gone smoothly so far, says Stevenson, there are still some
things that cash is much better for. Tipping for one. Stevenson found
himself accidentally stiffing a bell boy at a hotel because he had no
small bills to give him for his trouble. In fact, he had no bills,
period. He’s considering carrying low-denomination gift cards in the
future for these moments.
The other transaction category that cash is still king is in the
realm of elicit activities. You can’t buy pot with a card, right? Or can
you? Stevenson approached a dealer to find out.
“I asked the guy… ‘Will you accept a $20 Target gift card for this
gram of marijuana?’ He sort of scratched his chin and said, ‘Well, I do
live near Target; I do need some household wares, so okay. Fine.’”
That’s how close we are to a cashless society. But fear of technology
(not everyone has a smartphone and the know-how to use apps like Square)
and “the man” (many people don’t want all their money easily trackable
by the government and credit card companies) will keep our wallets full
of the green stuff for a least a few more years.

5.20.2012

Katie Beckett Leaves Legacy For Kids With Disabilities

May 19, 2012

Katie Beckett died Friday morning in the same
hospital where she'd once made history. Beckett was 3 years old when her
case changed health care law. She was 34 when she died. NPR's Joseph
Shapiro explains why she was important to other children with
disabilities.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Katie
Beckett has died in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the age of 34. She was just 3
years old when her case changed health care law. NPR's Joseph Shapiro
has more.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Katie
Beckett died Friday morning in the same hospital where she'd once made
history. In 1981, Katie Beckett was living at St. Luke's Methodist
Hospital in Cedar Rapids. She was stuck there because of a clash between
advancing medical technology and antiquated health care law.
Katie
was just 5 months old when she contracted a brain infection. She got
treated at the hospital and she pretty much recovered, except that she
still needed to use a ventilator to breathe for much of the day.
Medicaid, the government health insurance program would pay, but only if
she lived in the hospital. So Katie Beckett was stuck at St. Luke's
until she was 3 years old. And then President Ronald Reagan heard about
her.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Now, by what
sense do we have a regulation in government that says we'll pay $6,000 a
month to keep someone in a hospital that we believe would be better off
at home?
SHAPIRO: It was cheaper, just
one-sixth the amount, to care for Katie Beckett in her own home.
President Reagan changed the Medicaid rules, and the little girl went
home.
At the time it was thought there were
maybe 100 or 200 more children like her. But in the years since, more
than a half-million disabled children have gotten their care at home,
using what's now called the Katie Beckett Waiver. Senator Tom Harkin,
the Democrat from Beckett's home state of Iowa, was a chief author of
the major disability civil rights law that came later. He says Katie
Beckett was important to his understanding, too.

NPR
transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and
accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final
form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that
the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

5.17.2012

For a Nation of Whiners, Therapists Try Tough Love

By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

Therapists say "stop whining about your
problems." Elizabeth Bernstein on Lunch Break looks at why we are
whining more these days and the need to cut it out.

Sharon Rosenblatt was talking to her
therapist fast and furiously about her dating life, when the woman
suddenly interrupted her. "Haven't we heard this before?" the therapist
asked.

Was Ms. Rosenblatt offended? Not at all. The 23-year-old, who works
in business development for an information technology company, says she
specifically sought out a tough-love therapist after graduating from
college and moving to Silver Spring, Md., two years ago.

'No more complaints. I don't want to hear about this one more day.' —DOUGLAS MAXWELL, New York

Whining, as defined by experts—the therapists, spouses, co-workers
and others who have to listen to it—is chronic complaining, a pattern of
negative communication. It brings down the mood of everyone within
earshot. It can hold whiners back at work and keep them stuck in a
problem, rather than working to identify a solution. It can be toxic to
relationships.

How do you get someone to stop the constant griping? The answer is simple, but not always easy: Don't listen to it.

Live Chat Recap

Moms, and bosses, are good at this. Some
therapists are refusing to let clients complain endlessly, as
well—offering up Tough Love in place of the nurturing gaze and the
question "How does that make you feel?"

They're setting time limits on how long a client can stay on certain
topics and declaring some topics off-limits altogether. Some are even
taping clients so they can hear how they sound and firing clients who
can't stop complaining.

"Talking endlessly about your problems isn't going to help," says
Christina Steinorth, a marriage and family therapist in Santa Barbara,
Calif. She tells her patients in the first session: "If you are looking
for the type of therapy where I am going to nod my head and affirm what
you are feeling, this isn't the place to come."

When clients whine, Ms. Steinorth has them make a list of how their
life could improve if they stopped complaining and started working to
solve their problems. She suggests they set aside a 10-minute window
every day and do all their whining then. For clients who still won't
stop, she suggests they consider discontinuing therapy until they are
ready to move forward.

'I want whiners to ask themselves: "Would I hang out with this person?" ' —JULIE HANKS, Salt Lake City

Sometimes it feels like we're a nation
of whiners. Many of us learned this behavior as children, when we got
what we wanted by wearing our parents down. In adulthood, whining—or
venting, as I like to call it when I'm doing it—can be a coping
mechanism, allowing us to let off steam.

"A lot of whiners don't know they whine," says Julie Hanks, a
licensed clinical social worker who has a therapy clinic in Salt Lake
City. "I want them to ask themselves, 'Would I want to hang out with
this person?' "

Television encourages us to whine, thanks to shows like WE tv's
"Bridezillas" or A&E's "Monster In-Laws," about people who do almost
nothing else. Technology, meanwhile, has trained us to expect instant
gratification and become frustrated when we have to be patient. Facebook
can make us feel that everyone else has it easier.

According to the Seattle-based Gottman Institute, married couples who
flourish have a 5-to-1 ratio of positive-to-negative interactions
within "conflict conversations." In couples who divorce, the ratio is
less than 5 to 1.

The good news is that it is possible to get whiners to stop. Ms.
Hanks, who takes a tough stance on whining, says it is critical to build
a rapport with a client. She often challenges patients to go an entire
session without talking about pet topics, such as their mother or their
ex. You can ban overvisited topics at home, too, she says, as long as
you pay attention to real problems. She sometimes audiotapes sessions,
so clients can hear themselves whine. She has even taped herself at
home, to learn how she relates to family members.

Ms. Hanks says it is important for the
listener to understand that whining masks a deeper, more vulnerable
emotion. For example, a person might complain about a boss, but what he
is really feeling is fear that his career is stalled. "Whining is just a
powerless complaint," she says. Understand this and you can get to the
root of what is wrong.

Fran Walfish, a Beverly Hills, Calif., licensed
psychotherapist, has a three-step stop-whining program. First, she
points out the behavior, sometimes mirroring it back to a client, using
both the same words and tone.

"The goal is to create self-awareness," Dr. Walfish says, and in a neutral way.

Next, she points out that there's a pattern to the complaining.
Finally, she asks the whiner what he or she plans to do about it.

"When someone whines to you, it is an indirect way of saying, 'You
fix it,' " Dr. Walfish says. "You want to put the responsibility back
where it belongs, in the whiner's lap."

Douglas Maxwell, a licensed psychoanalyst in Manhattan
and president of the National Association for the Advancement of
Psychoanalysis, says constant complaining is often a "resistance," and
the person whining is often unaware of it.

With a client who gripes incessantly about a problem without making
progress, he will say: "Stop. No more complaints. I don't want to hear
about this one more day. You must talk about something else."

Often, clients don't take this so well, Mr. Maxwell
says. They resist his attempt to break through their barriers and even
transfer their anger onto him. But he holds his ground—and says he is
prepared to repeat his ban as often as he has to.

Sometimes, Mr. Maxwell will use humor. "Here we go again," he might tease a patient.

"Once you draw the line in the sand, you have to hold that line," he
says. "Otherwise, anything you say as a therapist loses its effect."

Crybabies, Be Gone!

Often, people don't realize they are
whining. The trick: Raise their self-awareness without using accusatory
or sarcastic language.

Go gently: Even therapists say this
conversation sometimes ends with the client walking out. Start by
telling the person who is whining how much you appreciate him or her.

Use a tone of genuine curiosity. You
want to get to the bottom of the problem together. You may want to
mirror the negative communication. 'I don't know if you hear yourself,
but listen to what you just said.'

Point out there's a pattern. Say, 'Do
you realize it's the fifth night in a row you've talked about this?'
Offer to tape future conversations so the person can hear for him or
herself.

Open up the conversation. A person
whining about work may be feeling unwell, or stuck in his career. Ask,
'Is there something else that's wrong?' Explain that it is hard for you
to hear the real issue because the person's tone and attitude are
getting in the way.

Ask the person what he or she plans to do about the problem. Hold them accountable.

Suggest alternatives. The person might
want to write down a list of complaints and leave it in a drawer. Or
keep a journal and circle repeated complaints in red pen. Or spend an
hour at the gym, or do something outdoors with you.

Set a time limit. For 10 minutes a day,
the person can whine unfettered—and you will listen. Then time is up.
Do this once a day, once a week—or challenge the person to a 'whine-free
day.'

5.16.2012

latimes.com

Op-Ed

The Holocaust and the sins of the father

In trying to find out more about who I am, I discovered the truth about my father.

By Les Gapay

May 6, 2012

A friend of mine got a lifetime achievement award recently, and
it got me to thinking about the Holocaust again, something that's never
been completely out of my mind for the last 22 years.
Randolph L.
Braham and I are an odd couple to be friends because our families were
on different sides of the Holocaust. His emails to me over the last 20
years have always been signed Randy, but I call him Professor Braham out
of respect.
Braham is distinguished professor emeritus of
political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New
York, director of the Rosenthal Center for Holocaust Studies there, and
the author of more than 60 books on the Holocaust. His parents and many
relatives were killed — murdered in cold blood is more accurate — in the
Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, which during World War II was part
of Hungary. Braham himself was in a forced-labor camp during the war.
My late father, on the other hand, was one of the perpetrators of the Holocaust in Hungary.
His
name was Laszlo Gyapay, and he was the mayor of a large city in the
Transylvanian portion of Hungary during the war. In 1944, he created a
ghetto where Jews were required to live. Ultimately, 36,000 Jews were
sent from Nagyvarad to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, most
to their deaths. My father was convicted in 1946 of anti-Jewish war
crimes in absentia and sentenced to life in prison. But I knew nothing
about his past growing up as a child in Montana, where we settled in
1951 after living for 51/2 years in West German camps for displaced
persons.
It wasn't until after a divorce in 1987 that I started
trying to find out more about who I was, a search that ultimately led to
the truth about my father. In 1990, I traveled to Hungary, where
long-lost relatives and a friend of my late mother told me about my
father's role during the war. I then began trying to learn everything I
could about his actions.
After I found a mention of my father in
one of Braham's books in 1991, I phoned him in New York. He was
surprised by my call, but very kind and helpful and referred me to other
works of his, including one that contained the war crimes judgment
against my father and others. He sent me various documents over the
years and even translated them when necessary.
Concerned about
what effect the revelations were having on me, he also offered some
advice. "You should do as I do," he said. "Treat your research like a
surgeon doing an emergency procedure on his own mother. You can't afford
to get personally involved."
It was difficult advice to follow,
especially after I began talking to Hungarian Holocaust survivors in New
York and Europe who remembered my father. One told me about an exhibit
mentioning my father in a Jewish museum in Budapest. A couple said
conditions in the ghetto had a reputation as being the worst in Hungary.
Others blamed my father personally for what happened to them in the
ghetto and at Auschwitz.
I also visited the scene of my father's
war crimes in what is now the city of Oradea, but was then called
Nagyvarad. There, I met with a handful of surviving Jews who showed me
the former ghetto, including the chambers where Jews thought to be
hiding valuables were tortured.At Auschwitz, I saw the barracks and
bunks that some of the survivors I'd interviewed had lived in.
When
I first wrote about my discoveries in the early 1990s, my former wife
and two daughters were supportive, but my three brothers quit speaking
to me. In Hungary, the stories split my relatives, with half cutting me
off and the rest offering to help with my continuing research.
I
was moved by the reactions of some Holocaust survivors. In 1992, I got a
letter from Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who noted that I had
discovered, as he had, that the way "to cope with the anger of truth" is
"in your words." Braham invited me to be his guest at the dedication of
the Holocaust museum in Washington in 1993. I sat with him and his wife
while President Bill Clinton and others spoke.
Many survivors,
including Wiesel and Braham, have said that the Holocaust caused them to
question the existence of God. But for me, immersing myself in that
horror ultimately sent me back to my Roman Catholic faith after an
absence of 30 years. After discovering my father's secret past, I found
myself going to cathedrals and churches in Eastern Europe to grapple
with it all. At first I wanted God to send my father to hell for his
actions, but after a couple of years I started praying for his soul (and
hoping that he had asked for forgiveness before he died). I also prayed
for my mother, whose views on my father's actions I never knew.
Last
year, I re-read Wiesel's Holocaust memoir "Night." He tells of
witnessing some hangings of concentration camp prisoners at Auschwitz
who were found to have arms or were suspected of sabotage. "Bare your
heads!" the head of the camp would yell after each hanging that the
other prisoners were forced to watch. Ten thousand caps came off
simultaneously. Then "Cover your heads!" Someone asked where God was
when a young boy was hanged, and Wiesel heard a voice within him say,
"He is hanging here on this gallows."
Not long after reading that,
I attended a Good Friday service in Palm Desert. While pondering a
giant crucifix of Jesus hanging on the wall, Wiesel's words came back to
me: "Bare your heads," I thought. "Cover your heads." There is God, I
thought, hanging on that cross made from a tree. I then said a prayer
for the Jews of Nagyvarad, but I knew it wasn't necessary. If there is a
God in heaven, they are there by his side.Les Gapay is a freelance writer in Rancho Mirage.

5.15.2012

When thousands of frenzied seabirds invaded the coastline
near Monterey, Calif., in the summer of 1961, the scene played out like
a Hollywood horror movie. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported a “rain” of birds known as Sooty Shearwaters slamming into homes and other shoreline structures.

“Dead and stunned seabirds littered the streets and roads in the foggy early dawn,” the newspaper reported on August 18, 1961.

Two years later, a similar plotline made it onto the
big screen through the eyes of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock—in the Macabre
form of The Birds. The master of suspense and mystery, responsible for
Psycho, Rear Window and other classics, happened to be visiting the area
during the bird invasion. The event fueled inspiration for the film
(along with a chilling avian story published in 1952 by British author
Daphne du Maurier).

And now scientists have produced fresh evidence of what caused the birds to go crazy.

A team that includes Mark Ohman of Scripps Institution
of Oceanography at UC San Diego recently reported in Nature Geoscience
that high quantities of Pseudo-nitzschia, a type of phytoplankton,
produced a neuro- toxin that likely moved up the food chain and was
eventually gobbled up by the birds.

The researchers say the neurotoxin—known as domoic
acid—poisons the brain and “causes symptoms such as confusion,
disorientation, scratching, seizures, coma and even death.”

The key behind the new findings was the ability to
travel back in time to study ocean samples from a half-century prior.
The California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI),
one of the world’s longest continuous marine monitoring programs,
provided the necessary samples now stored in the Scripps Pelagic
Invertebrate Collection, a library of archived marine samples. Such
resources allowed Ohman and his colleagues to study the gut contents of
several specimens of grazing zooplankton that were captured off Monterey
prior to the bird frenzy.

It is an example, says Ohman, of how detailed and
carefully preserved geo-referenced materials can provide answers to
questions that were never anticipated when they were being collected.